S60 Open to new features

One user recently complained during testing: I wish I had more applications available on my Active standby application list (note: the user did not actually say this; he said “…on my primary screen”). Users generally do not like to “travel” too far to do anything on their mobiles. If, for example, they don’t have the Clock application on their shortcut list, they have to complete several steps to actually set an alarm.

One possible solution is to create a more “active” interface. Take again the clock example: What if the clock were an icon to which the user could move the cursor and select the clock? Then the user, without leaving the primary screen, could set her alarm, check her various World clocks etc. And, even better, the user can replace the Clock application on the Active standby application list with another application he uses regularly!

So Americans like pizza…is it so bad?! A recent article describes the information-seeking habits of Americans via their mobiles. It seems that Americans of all ages have been busy (locating pizza places) with their mobiles, calling the 411 directory for assistance. From a user experience standpoint, this makes sense: a quick phone call results in useful, needed results. Users want specific information, they know where and how to get it, and voila! It is done.

I know I may sound repetitive but am I missing something? Is there an alternative to a mobile phone call to the 411 directory, which produces immediate and useful results? Could users send an SMS to a 411 number and receive similar (and fast) information? In a day and age when we don’t necessarily want to waste the time talking to another person (like an operator, or our mothers if the 411 call does not produce results), there ought to be an alternative. Perhaps the problem for users is that most alternatives are too slow, e.g. Internet access via one’s mobile device, or not informative enough.

I came across this site for teenage girls (gURLS.com) this summer. It seems like these kinds of sites are the perfect solutions for companies wanting to make that link and leap from the Internet to mobile. It is a great site and was created at the time when teenage girls were surpassing teenage boys (in the US) with their mobile phone use. Quite smart!

So after checking out the site, and enjoying it, I was left wondering this: why not create sites like this (especially for users in the US who are still so tied to the Internet…for a variety of reasons, one being the inability to obtain good, solid, consistent coverage) for different users, especially S60 users? Sure it is useful, and user-friendly, to have a S60 site for those who already know it exists or who are adept enough in the mobile world to even know what S60 is. But then there are the others who just use the technology and don’t know much about it; and because they don’t know much about it, their desire for content, applications, and services etc. is limited.

Although we know that teenagers are a huge source of revenue for mobile products and services, those who are purchasing the smartphones are, for now, from a slightly different demographic. They are men who make enough money to buy a smartphone and the accessories to go with it. So why not create a site: www.mobileMENtality.com? (Note: I'm obviously joking about the name, but hopefully you catch my drift!) Offer all types of demographic-specific (!) content, and mix in S60-related mobile content, applications and services. Do any sites like this already exist that are truly geared towards making it easy to understand what kind of stuff is out there for the non-technie, "not interested in the details" S60 users--sites that are also interesting and fun!?

As I mentioned in my last entry there is enormous potential to reach unparalleled end-user satisfaction with well-working and easy to use solutions which make our family life little easier. Last weekend I faced a real world use case once again. The family calendar is definitely the thing but the offering could be even more desirable with couple of features more. One of those is synchronization of Contacts. And now I really emphasize the word easy-to-use and don’t count on solutions based on MS Exchange, not yet!

It’s pretty irritating (as I found out) to try to make phone call with your family member’s phone, just to recognize that you don’t know the people in the contact list or the number of your lovely mother in law is missing; I know it could be intentional but… So is there possibility to have feature that allows you to have intelligent synchronization of your contacts? Of course, you should have possibility to specify the numbers you would like to share with others. Maybe we’re closing the moment when our phones will work as displays and show the content stored in data warehouses, hosted by operators for example, but meanwhile some solutions in this field could make our lives little easier, I hope!

The question is: How to manage your family schedules easily; one has music lesson other has football trainings and third would like to have car this evening. Ok, you can make the calls but still the coordination is very challenging. There you have a clear user need identified: Shared calendar and online synchronization of it. This is pretty famous use case (as we all know) but there is no appropriate solution available. In this case mobile device is the one who can make our lives little easier. But to make this idea fly he or she need some help from PC and home entertainment devices. These could work as a presentation centers at home. Also, the potential users are more used to manage the settings with computers and TV’s than mobile phones.

So the use case is very clear but the real challenge is to design UI’s for this need. Because the skills of the users will vary a lot, it’s essential to have solutions that are easy to use and understand; the affordance issues should also be taken seriously. However, if the challenges in UI design are solved, I’m sure that there will be masses of satisfied end-users. Most importantly people who are used to work with the well-working platform will not change it when the device is in the end of its life cycle. In this case the platform has a real chance to make the difference.

I had a discussion with my friend about music. I asked him why he stuck to CDs, why he didn’t listen to MP3s and other similar stuff? As a true friend of music he said that the MP3 music does not have the same high quality as his CDs. This I could accept, but he also had another point that I started to think about more carefully. He had borrowed his friend’s iPod for a while and bought music via iTunes. The computer broke, but he was happy to have all his music on the player as a back up. However, this happiness did not last a long time. He realized that the music could not be easily transferred from the player back to another computer…that it would be on the player until it was deleted. While he had also intended to transfer the music to his mobile phone and see how that worked out, he gave the iPod back at that point and took an even firmer grip of his good old CDs.

I know that this is just a single case, but I think this friend of mine is not alone with his problems. The need to listen to music, also in a mobile context, is there but the practise with all different file types and devices is way beyond smooth and happy for an average user who simply wants to enjoy the music. It is also annoying from the user’s point of view if the content (in this case the music) is stuck on only one device. The users are willing to pay for the music – once – and after that they want to use it in various contexts and, most likely, with various devices.

I know there are many issues with the DRM that make this whole sharing and storing thing much more complicated than e.g. it was/is with copy-right protected CDs – but I’d still dare to speak for separating the device and the content. The user should be able to view and interact with the content (s)he has bought via different devices – one of them being a mobile phone.

All in all, I think that the User Experience of mobile music is not so much affected by the user interfaces of the different players, but the bigger picture of purchasing, buying, converting, transferring, organizing and finally enjoying the music with different devices – and the complexity of this process.

Peggy Salz writes about customer segmentation in the mobile market (Mobile Communications International Issue 31, May 2006). She notes that operators tend to neglect a very important market segment: people over 50 years old. The senior market segment is huge - and untapped.

I would, however, not bundle together everyone over 50. There are significant differences in the needs and consumption patterns of these people. Curiously enough, in the same story, Salz explains that age cannot be the segmentation criteria! Instead, lifestyle should be used as the differentiating factor.

Salz offers good examples about products that have appealed to the older segments. In Japan, a product called Raku Raku Simple Keitai has a piece-of-mind feature which automatically sends a message to the family members of the user every time his/her phone is plugged in to recharge. This might be nice for everyone...including, for example, lovers living in different cities.

So, let's start observing the grey panthers! New ideas with great implementation and business potential may emerge.

I, together with my wife, spent a wonderful weekend in a five star hotel. The experience was unbelievable; no children, excellent food, time to read the morning papers … The only thing that wasn’t so superb was our Sunday breakfast. We waited for over 15 minutes to get any coffee and when it finally arrived it was carried with a sour face. This wasn’t the experience that I was expecting in a five star hotel. Anyway, when I mentioned this to another waitress she handled the situation in a very professional and gentle way: we were very pleased again. After this episode I started to wonder whether is it possible in application business to make big saves like this. And in my opinion, it’s impossible. You have to make it work perfectly at once. The bad experience is not violating your business only; unfortunately it will harm the whole industry. So, how can you make it work perfectly when the playground is as fragmented as it is? The answer is very simple and I’m sure that you are familiar with it: let your customer be your developer. With the right kind of tools it wouldn’t be very expensive. It’s much more expensive if you are betting on the wrong horse at this point.

Something important that we have not yet appropriately addressed here in this blog is the issue of context. At the heart of user experience research is context. Many of the complexities related to gathering data about mobile technology use emerge from the fact that the real life is “out there”– it’s not enough to gather information in a fixed environment. The physical movement and ever changing geographic location found in the modern mobile lifestyle suggests the need to use a more fluid, hence less static, method of analysis. Hence, the user in context.

Basically, those research methods which hold the most promise for mobile usage and user research are those conducted with the actual use context in mind (IMHO). As we follow and observe users within their everyday environments, e.g. driving to work, eating lunch, meeting a friend at a café, we may be able to capture much more detail than if we asked users lots of questions about their behavior during a testing session, in a lab-like setting (e.g. focus group, usability tests).

Context is essential to the user experience. Context provides insight into not only who users are (demographics) but what is important to them and what motivates them to act and make decisions (psychographics). Think about those things you have come to wish for and desire on your mobile based on your unique ways of using it. Think about your frustrations (and your curses) when your mobile does not work the way you want or need it to…these frustrations, wishes, desires can all be translated into development ideas and then, perhaps, into device changes. However, this can happen only if the experts and those who can make it happen are willing to listen!

I wanted to address a topic from what I believe was my very first entry for this blog, on cultural usability. One quote in particular is useful for this discussion: “the ways in which users learn and adopt new roles and rules vary by culture.” Now, remember my trip to Vienna last weekend, and the resulting blog entry? I wrote about a specific user behaviour we see emerging within some cultures, like the youth in Vienna and London, but not among others, specifically not among the youth in Helsinki. In my eyes, this group activity of music-listening on one mobile device is quite annoying and obtrusive. Now granted, I only ride public transportation once in a while, but I’ve asked around among those who do use it more regularly and their observations are similar. It is just not happening (note: thank goodness) here in Helsinki...YET.

This is a really good example of cultural differences in usability. This begs the question: Why would the Finnish youth not adopt this type of behaviour, of listening (sometimes loudly) to music on their mobile devices with their friends while riding public transportation?

Well, I’ll tell you a story and maybe we’ll see the connection. When my Finnish husband and I were living in the US, friends and family would unfailingly say and ask the following: “We saw a news piece on 60 Minutes about Finns and tango dancing. Are Finnish people really depressed all the time?” Note: the tango dancing from this 60 Minute piece is not the sexy, fast-paced tango dancing we imagine but the somewhat slow, quite melancholy stuff. Nonetheless, the answer to the silly question is a resounding NO.

However, the Finnish culture, especially when compared with American or other “outgoing” cultures, does value quietness and humbleness; they do not value “being seen or noticed”—in fact, I often observe parents hush their toddlers and babies on public transportation, even when they are barely making a peep and/or sitting well-behaved in their seats or strollers. Children are taught, perhaps not intentionally, that it is a negative thing to draw attention to themselves. Could this be why the Finnish youth are not easily and quickly adopting this mobile behaviour? I don’t know. But it makes me wonder…

My point here is that developers need to consider how their products will be used, by whom, and in what context. They need to understand that not everyone will adopt behaviours in similar ways. These tend to vary and change all the time; in fact, the youth are some of our best inventors of new mobile behaviours. Good quality user research is needed to gain a clear understanding of cultural differences in user behaviours, attitudes and needs.